Brilliant Biology: The Glowing Life-Forms of "Creatures of Light"

The exhibit "Creatures of Light" just opened at the American Museum of Natural History, just uptown from PopMech's offices in New York. We went up to take a look at this natural light show, much of which happens deep below the ocean's surface, hidden from our eyes.

Brilliant Biology: 10 Bioluminescent Life-Forms

Brilliant Biology: 10 Bioluminescent Life-Forms

For an experience that’s all about illumination, "Creatures of Light" is one of the darkest museum exhibits you’ll ever walk through. "Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence" is the newest exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, just uptown from the PopMech offices here in New York. It just opened to the public, so we took a walk through the tour of life that lights up. The exhibit’s dark halls simulate a dark meadow or the deep ocean, where the bioluminescence of fireflies, jellyfish, and other creatures flickers like a flash in the night.

"We were trying to figure out how to do it in a way that would recreate a bunch of different environments in an immersive experience and cover it all," says John Sparks, AMNH curator of ichthyology, "[to] expose people to the diversity of bioluminescence across the tree of life." Just as a variety of creatures use bioluminescence, they use it for a variety of reasons. Some use it to lure prey, or to signal potential mates. Other strategies are a bit cleverer. Sparks says some species, such as the dragonfish and hatchetfish, use "counterillumination" to hide. That is, the light they generate on their undersides is fine-tuned to match the amount of sunlight that pierces down to a particular depth, camouflaging them. The cookiecutter shark, which Sparks wasn’t able to include in the exhibit, uses bioluminescence to appear smaller than it is, luring in unsuspecting life forms who think they’re going to get an easy meal and that promptly become the meal.